DAHLSENS Warragul has been sold to Bunnings as the hardware chain struggles to find its place in the retail hardware market.

A Dahlsens Warragul spokesperson told The Warragul Citizen the Warragul store will change its name in a month.

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“As of the 9th of February we will be operating at the store as Bunnings,” the spokesperson said.

“Until then it’s business as usual.”

Although Dahlsens management announced there will be redundancies in some parts of the company, all Warragul staff have been offered jobs by the new management.

“That is all under discussion at the moment. It will be under an individual basis but yes they are offering us all employment,” the spokesperson said.

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A Dahlsens media release said the chain is focusing on supplying builders and tradespeople and competition from Bunnings and Masters is becoming harder to overcome.

“The long-term strategic direction for our business has been to concentrate on the trade,” the media release said.

“Until recently, our retail business supported that direction and we were comfortable maintaining those stores.

“However, the increasing intensity in retail hardware, especially with the competition between Bunnings and Woolworths, along with an extremely tough market is forcing us to re-focus our energy on our core business.”

Dahlsens Sale will become Bunnings on 16 February and Dahlsens Horsham will also change on 23 February.

Stores in Traralgon, Albury and Ballarat were scaled back late last year.

“This announcement marks a big turning point for Dahlsens and it will be very sad to no longer have these stores as part of our Group,” the media release said.

Seems a pretty small Bunnings? Hopefully they extend. I have actually always found the people who work their nice but the store to be terribly disorganised. Now all Warragul needs is a Kmart, target or big W, a Harris scarfe, spotlight, jeans west or like, best and less, more then two furniture stores, house and probably A heap more. Considering smaller towns than Warragul such as Sale and Wonthaggi have most of those things it is amazing they are not here. While it is nice to not like big business it is not representative of current day shopping habits and in the end most people (like me) do all shopping in Traralgon, Pakenham and Fountain Gate.